So I am a fan of dependency injection (DI), inversion of control (IoC), and the way DI and IoC allow for simplistic methods and Unit Tests. With DI, you can do method injection, property injection, or constructor injection. I don’t care which one a project uses, as long as they keep it simple.

Constructor Injection

This article is focussing on constructor injection. Constructor injection seems to be very popular, if not the most popular method of DI. Constructor Injection is considered to have a benefit because it requires the instantiator to provide all the dependencies an object needs in order to create an instance of it.

An Example of Constructor Injection Hell

Recently, I started working with NopCommerce, which uses DI heavily. They use Autofac and register objects with Autofac so it can provide concrete instances of any interfaces.

I am going to use NopCommerce as an example of what not to do. Now before I do this, I want to explain that NopCommerce overall has a very good architecture. Better than most. Finding something that I consider a “what not to do” in a project should not steer you away from NopCommerce. In fact, their plugin model and architecture works quite well.

Below is an example of constructor injection gone wrong from the OrderProcessingService.cs file in NopCommerce.

Problems in the Constructor Injection Implementation

So what is wrong with the above constructor? Well, a lot. Look, this is just bad code. While constructor injection is a good idea, taking it to this extreme is not a good idea. In fact, it is a terrible idea.

The Constructor breaks the 10/100 rule. The constructor, with comments, method parameters, and method body is 126 lines of code. The method itself is far more than 10 lines of code, it is 39 lines of parameters and 39 more lines of member assignments, and is 80 lines of code.

The Constructor breaks the keep it super simple (KISS) principle. Having to new up 39 concrete instances of the parameters in order to create an object is not simple. Imagine mocking 39 interface parameters in a Unit Test. Ugh!

This constructor is a hint that the entire class is doing too much. The class is 3099 lines and clearly breaks the single responsibility principle. It is not the OrderProcessingService’s responsibility to store 39 dependent services.

The constructor breaks the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle. Almost all other classes in NopCommerce use constructor injection to access services.

Options for Refactoring

Option 1 – Container object

You could create a container that has all of these dependecies, a dependency model object for the OrderProcessingService. This object would house the 39 dependent services and settings. But Option 2 would be better.

Option 2 – Accessor objects

Looking at this from the Single Responsibility Principle, shouldn’t there be one class and interface, a ServiceAccessor : IServiceAccessor that allows one to access any dependent service? Instead of passing in 30 services, wouldn’t it make more sense to pass in a single object called a ServiceAccessor that implements IServiceAccessor? Should there be a ServiceAccessor of some sort? Turns out there is a static: EngineContext.Current.Resolve(). Since it is a static, maybe you could wrap it in a ServiceAccessor : IServiceAccessor object.

There are also a lot of “settings” objects passed into the constructor? Shouldn’t there be a SettingsService? Well, there is. One can pass in the ISettingsService and then call _settingService.LoadSetting().

Instead of passing in 39 parameters, methods with a single responsibility to fetch a service should be used.

Option 3 – Refactor the class

Since the class is 3099 lines. If the class were broken into logical pieces, naturally, the constructor for each smaller piece would have less parameters.

This article isn’t about unit testing an extension method. That is pretty straight forward. This article is about unit testing and object that calls an extension method where the extension method is difficult to test. Likely the method is difficult to test because it touches an external system, such as a database or a remote web service.

If you have an extension method that is simple and doesn’t touch and external system, it is easy to unit test. Look at the example below. There is nothing blocking you from Unit Testing code that calls this method.

You need Unit Tests for SomeFunction(). Imagine that all other code is 100% unit tested. But you are struggling with how to Unit Test SomeFunction because it has two dependencies:

MyObject

DoWork

The Unit Tests should not call the real DoWork because it does really complex stuff and touches external systems. However, you need the parent method to provide a valid return value.

Well, you could just drop the ExcludeFromCodeCoverageAttribute on the method and move on. But what if there are a half-dozen other objects that call the parent method that also need to be tested and they need a return value from SomeFunction()? It would be best to solve this in this object as so you only change one class file, not a half-dozen.

One option to resolve this is to use dependency injection. Dependency Injection (DI) simply means that any dependencies can be injected. When some people hear DI, they think they immediately need the huge overhead of an IoC Container. IoC containers are nice and have their uses. But using an IoC container only to allow unit tests substitute a dependency is a huge overkill. If your project already has an IoC container, feel free to use it. Otherwise, I recommend you use a simpler option. I prefer an internal lazy injectable property.

Creating a Lazy Injectable Property

An internal lazy injectable property is a property that is instantiated on first use if it is null, but always for code with internal access to swap out the property value. Here is the syntax:

Note: This assumes your unit tests references your project already, has InternalsVisibleTo configured, and has Moq from NuGet applied to the test project.

Look how simple the above code is. If _MyObject is null, the first time MyObjectProperty is called, it is instantiated to a new MyObject().It is internal because only the unit test will every replace it. I don’t really want this property exposed elsewhere. We can use InternalsVisibleTo to allow the Unit Tests access.Now my ObjectUnderTest will look like this:

However, it is questionable whether this is even necessary. Does MyObject do anything that requires this level of abstraction? Not in this example. It isn’t the object itself that is complex, it is the extension method that really needs to be injectable.

Creating a Lazy Injectable Property for a method

You might be asking yourself, “What about the extension method? It is a method not an object. How can I inject that?” Well, you can. Remember, even methods can be treated as objects. The answer doesn’t change much. The only difference is understanding how to treat a method as an object.You can objectify methods using multiple objects such as Action, Func, Predicate, delegate, etc. I am not going to go into how to do that here beyond the minimal needed to accomplish this task.

Quick tip: Use Action for void methods, Predicate for methods return bool, Func for methods with any return value, delegate if you have ref or out paramters.

Here are the steps:

Create the following Lazy Injectable Property inside ObjectUnderTest:

Note: I am using Func because it has a return value of object. (See the Quick Tip a few lines up.) Since I have two paramters and a return type, I will specifically use the generic Func.

You are now 100% covered. The only code we can’t cover is the lambda call to obj.DoWork because we can’t Unit Test that as it touches an external system. Which is why we marked it with the ExcludeFromCodeCoverageAttribute.

If you create a static Dictionary in code, every time you need to change the dictionary, you have change code, recompile, and redeploy. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to change code. What if you could create your dictionary in an Xml file and deserialize it. You can now make the change outside of code.

Code generation is the idea of having a tool write code written for you. If you use a modern IDE, such Visual Studio, you likely use a type of code generation, even if you think you don’t.

Anytime code is written for you, it is code generation. You use code generation whenever you do the following:

Create a new solution or project – Each project is a template with a base set of code ready for you to use.

Add a new class, interface, or another item to a project – When adding a new class to a project, the class comes with a pre-created class object. If you add a new class called Person, the following class file would be created and added to the project:

The using statements are lines of code. The namespace and class definitions and the brackets are lines of code. You get 11 lines of code not including the whitespace lines. This code was created for you because you didn’t have to write it. That doesn’t mean it is 100% useful. If you don’t use threading, the last using statement can be removed.

Similarly, other items that are added have a base set of code.

Use code snippets – Code Snippets are quite powerful. With a few characters and then the tab key twice, you can create a lot of code. There are many built-in code snippets. If you are using them, you should be.

Other Visual Studio features – Visual Studio has some specific use cases where it provides code generation. For example, if you highlight a class name and choose Extract Interface, Visual Studio will generate and interface from the

Plugins and 3rd party tools – Many plugins can generate code for you. For example, Resharper can do numerous code generation features, such as properly overriding the Equals method. ORMs, such as Entity Framework, have code generation tools. Entity Framework can generate most the Entities (class files that represent objects stored in database tables) for you.

You can enhance the code generation tools

Most of these features are available as platforms for you to build upon. Enhancing these can be a simple as copying an existing item or as complex as developing your own product.

In Visual Studio, you can do any of the following: (listed in order of ease of use)

Create your own snippets.

Create your own class/item templates

Download or purchase additional code generation plugins

Create your own Project/Solution templates

Create your own Visual Studio plugins/3rd party tools

If you are repeatedly writing the same code over an over again, you probably would benefit from creating a code generation solution.

Faster and higher Quality

When a human writes something, there is room for human error. If a person writes the same thing over and over, there is a tendency to minimize and cut corners. Also, there are many standard pieces of code that have already gone through significant use and bug fixes resulting in a stable and scalable piece of code. For example, overriding Equals in a class isn’t always straight forward. If you do it yourself, you might be left wondering if you have properly overridden Equals of if your implementation has well-known bugs? Do you leave those bugs in or research and fix them? If you research and fix them, how long will it take you each time you override Equals to make sure you accounted for all well-known bugs? However, if you use a generator with a standard, tested, and bug-free piece of code, your code will be higher quality and it will be created almost instantly. See, faster and higher quality.

I am hoping to have time to create a series of posts on this topic, starting with Snippets. But to get you started, check out my Visual Studio snippets for C# on GitHub.

Some developers like to write one line of code for complex tasks. It’s called code golf and there is a whole subdomain on StackExchange dedicated to code golf. Also, I have seen an idea mentioned on some forums that you should never have a method that is a single line of code. I am going to challenge that statement and suggest that when a single line of code is difficult to understand, wrapping it in a method for the sole purpose of readability is a good practice to follow.

But I am not going to dictate my personal preference onto other developers. That is not the point of this article. The point of this article is to talk about the benefit of a method for the sole purpose of documentation and making the code more readable. Besides, there are hundreds of other single lines of code that are difficult to understand. Thanks to Linq alone, C# now has plenty of examples. But this isn’t just a C# concept. This concept work in C++, Java, JavaScript, or any language. This concept is language agnostic.

So to start with, what is the above code doing? Can you tell from this line of code? I couldn’t at first glance. I had to examine it further. Who wrote this. (Hopefully, it wasn’t me two years ago. It probably was.)

Well, my ORM has Products and each product has a list of Features. My WebService also has Products and each Product has a list of Features. However, the ORM Product and Feature classes are not the same object types as the WebService Product and Feature classes. They are different objects in different namespaces. So basically, this code gets the list of features foreach product from the database and converts the features to a WebService Feature type, puts them in a list and assigns them to the WebService Product type’s feature list.

Wait, why did I have to explain that to you. Why didn’t you simply know what the code did? Because the code is not self-explanatory. Is is not easy to read or understand.

What if instead of our embedding our loop in our current code, we created and called this method instead?

Basically, we encapsulate (did I just use the term encapsulation outside of a CS 101 course) the complex code in a method and use the method instead.

GetFeaturesFromDatabase(dbContext, wsProducts);

Is that not clearer and easier to read?

But should we do this?

Let’s assume that our code already uses dependency injection and we already can mock the dbContext, and our code already has Unit Tests that are passing. So we don’t really need this method for any other reason other than documentation.

My answer is YES! Yes, using a method for the sole purpose making the code self-documenting and easier to read is worth it.

Note: UserType.Contact and User.System are enums in the above example.

INSERT INTO … SELECT with Entity Framework

Imagine you have these three tables. Product, ProductGroup, ProductGroupMembership. You want to make Products a member of a group by inserting into the ProductGroupMembership table.

INSERT INTO ProductGroupMembership (ProductId, GroupId, CreateDate, CreatedBy)
SELECT Id, @GroupId, GetDate(), @CreatedBy FROM Product
WHERE Id IN (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -- there could be hundreds or thousands of numbers in the IN statement

EPIC FAIL!!! Can't be done without raw sql and opening up to sql injection attacks.

However, you can create a stored procedure that takes and user-defined table called ArrayOfInt. Then add EntityFrameworkExtras.EF6, which is available as a NuGet package, to call the storedprocedure and pass it an array.

WHERE with many AND/ORs with Entity Framework

Imagine you have these three tables. Product, ProductGroup, ProductGroupMembership. You want to make Products a member of a group by inserting into the ProductGroupMembership table.

You have a list of software Products provided to you. However, the input only includes Product.Name and Product.Version. You now need to check if the products exist and get the id.

SELECT Id FROM Product
WHERE (Name = 'Product 1' AND Version = '10.0')
WHERE (Name = 'Product 2' AND Version = '10.0')
WHERE (Name = 'Product 3' AND Version = '10.1')
WHERE (Name = 'Product 4' AND Version = '10.0')
WHERE (Name = 'Product 5' AND Version = '1.0')

EPIC FAIL!!! Can't be done without raw sql

However, you can add LinqKit’s PredicateBuilder to do this. PredicateBuilder works on top of Entity Framework and is available as a NuGet package. See how I used it here: Entity Framework and many WHERE clauses

I have an application I am building that needs to be malleable. It is a data-driven application. It will have users, contacts, organizations, and many other objects represented as a database table. One goal of this project is to allow for extension. Some customers are going to want to add a field to an object that our tables don’t include. We want to handle this end to end. It seems the perfect use of a property value table.

It would be pretty easy to create an Addendum table for each object.

dbo.Organization
dbo.OrganizationAddendum
dbo.User
dbo.UserAddendum

While that is OK, it requires additional work every time a table is created. What if a Partner writes a plugin and adds an object in the database? Well, unless the Partner creates an addendum table, this won’t really work.

Is there a way to solve this so any object in the database can have Addendum data?

Then in the Web interface, I could have single template control that works for any object. Whatever object I am editing, be it user, contact, organization or other, the control would exist. If a partner adds a plugin with a new object, the control would exist. Seems easy enough, right?

The problem comes in with some of the features that we would like to be automatically handled on the database side:

Table should have Id column

Table should have four main fields

Table <– Database table to add addendum data for

TableId <– The row of in the table that addendum is for

Property <– The property of the addendum

Value <– the value of the addendum data

Table should have the four auditing fields in IAuditTable

CreateDate

CreatedBy

LastUpdated

LastUpdatedBy

Only one Property of the same name should exist per table and id. Easily done with a Unique constraint.

Table should have a constraint that enforces that table must exist. I found a way to do this: I created User-defined Function (UDF) and check constraint that uses the UDF.

Table should have a constraint that enforces that TableId must exist in the Table

Not supported – CLR UDFin C#? Or handle this in code?

The row should delete when Table is deleted. Similar to ON DELETE CASCADE.

Not supported – CLR UDFin C#? Or handle this in code?

The row should delete when a row from a table that matches Table and Id is deleted. Similar to ON DELETE CASCADE.

Not supported – CLR UDFin C#? Or handle this in code?

Perhaps we ignore the missing features from database side and handle them with code?

Or perhaps another database system other than Microsoft SQL Server (such as Postgresql) could do this?

Scaling

Assuming I got this to work, I see one main problem: Table size. However, I am not sure this is an issue. Tables can quite large, millions of rows. If this table got too big, then we could investigate why, analyze the table, and perhaps move a property value from the Addendum table to an actual column in a real table. This should replace the ability to create a plugin with an additional table, but it should make it so few plugins are needed as there is more extensibility out of the box.

Also, we found that default values often alleviate addendum tables. For example, imagine adding an addendum item to an organization, ContactIntervalInDays. Say a company is supposed to contact their customers every 90 days. However, some customers might require more or less contact. However, the default is 90. Instead of adding 90 to all customers, you set a default. If ContactIntervalInDays is not in the Addendum table, then use 90, otherwise use the value.

Anyway, it seems like an Addendum table is something that most projects and solutions, such as CRMs, Shopping Carts, ERPs, etc. should implement. It won’t solve the most complex issues with extending a product, but it would perhaps solve many of them. The more complex extension can continue to be added via a well-designed plugin architecture.

Unfortunately, this simplistic solution is not supported. The recommendation is to have 1 addendum table for every regular table. Ugh! That doesn’t scale and is not maintainable long term.

So today, I needed to get Entity Framework to return me a list of Products from the database based on a list of Product.Name and Product.Version values (not Ids). If it were Product.Id, it would have been simple as I could have used an IN statement, but it wasn’t.

The query might get many (maybe hundreds at a time) products based on the list. Here is the query I imagined.

So when doing a query like this, since there could be hundreds, I have a couple of options.

Query the database once for each product.

SELECT * FROM dbo.Product
WHERE (Name = 'Product 1' AND Version = '10.0')

Repeat this same query once for each Product.

Query the database one time with an or clause for each Product.Name and Product.Version.

SELECT * FROM dbo.Product
WHERE (Name = 'Product 1' AND Version = '10.0')
OR (Name = 'Product 2' AND Version = '10.0')
OR (Name = 'Product 3' AND Version = '10.0')
OR (Name = 'Product 4' AND Version = '1.0')
-- There could be hundreds

Query the database once and get all products and use code to find the ones I wanted.

SELECT * FROM dbo.Product

Option 1 I didn’t like this option because I could end up doing hundreds of single queries. That doesn’t sound like a good idea. What would the performance impact would be when doing hundreds of single queries? The overhead of traversing over the network to the database would prevent this option from scaling.

Option 2 This is the option I imagined in my head. My gut said to use this option.

Option 3 This would work. We only have about two thousand products today and querying them all would, right now, not be bad at all. However, we just bought a company and will be adding more products. We plan to buy more companies. Also, we have two companies that we have already bought and have yet to add those products in. When would the number of Product rows in the database make the SELECT * and invalid option? Doing this would work now, but it leave a time bomb for some future developer encounter and have to fix.

Winner: Option 2

Problem Entity Framework doesn’t really have an easy way to create the Option 2 query.

This option means I have to create magic strings and make sure that I handle the strings correctly. It has bugs already. Such as what if a product only has a name and not a version (version could be null or empty, who knows) or vice-versa? How would this affect my query string?

PredicateBuilder

Predicate Builder from the LinqKit library which is available as a NuGet package.

PredicateBuilder isn’t very intuitive. For starters, what is the different between these methods:

PredicateBuilder.True() – from what I understand this would be more appropriate and understandable as PredicateBuilder.And()

PredicateBuilder.False() – from what I understand this would be more appropriate and understandable as PredicateBuilder.Or()

Also, you have to remember to call AsExpandable() on the first call to a table in order to use it.

Conclusion

I am going to go with PredicateBuilder for now. It feels cleaner than rolling my own string query. But both solutions ultimately worked. That means that Entity Framework ultimately provided me a solution without an extra library. However, LinqKit saved me from magic strings. My only question is this: Why isn’t a predicate builder built into Entity Framework?

Written in response, to all the Java developers who claim that Java doesn’t need C#’s property syntax.

The truth is most C# developers can’t quantify all the benefits to C# properties because there are so many. Most arguments I have seen from C# developers have been weak at best. These arguments fail to provide the Java development team a good enough reason to implement C#-like properties.

A proper analogy would be the Pyramids. You can’t point to one brick and say, “That brick makes the pyramid,” because every brick is small (relative the size of the who pyramid), but together, each brick is important to making the pyramid and altogether, they are one of the seven wonders of the world. Similarly, C# Properties provide many little features that together improve the language far more significantly than most can’t quantify.

Properties are quite awesome and provide some great features that Java cannot do now.

1. Easy refactoring when moving from a simple member variable to a property.

Properties using the same syntax as a member variable enable more than one feature, but we are going to talk about only this feature here to start.

public class MyObj
{
public int Id;
public String Name;
}

The program starts off with this because for years simplicity is all that is needed.

Note: A getter and a setter provide little to no benefit for a model object. If you aren’t encapsulating code on get and set, using a getter and setter gets in the way. Also, a using a getter and a setter is only a convention anyway, and not forced by the language. As such, getters and setters can’t be relied upon.

A year later, you find that you need to add some feature on name set. You change your class. In Java, you have to create getters and setters.

None of my existing code broke using the property example. This sounds trivial but what if you are an API that hundreds of other tools consume and use. Now this a breaking change that has a massive impact on a business. This feature is huge.

Can Java change a class today from a member variable to a method without breaking an API? No, it cannot. Does this happen often? No, but when it does, it is a breaking change without properties, while with properties, it works without a second thought.

Important: This feature is also why so many hacks that suggest that Java adds a language construct that creates getProperty and setProperty methods are still broken. I’ve seen recommendations such as this where the suggestion is for the compiler and IntelliSense to just convert these to getProperty and setProperty:

However, even with this, the suggested syntax is not the right suggestion. While the above syntax works for auto properties, how would code be added to the get or set method? The above syntactical sugar, while better than what java has now, is lacking compared to C#’s implementation and would result in fewer features.

2. Replacing an object that uses member variables with an interface

This is similar to #1. You have an object and need to create a layer of abstraction and use an interface for that object. But the object uses only member variables? How can you create an interface for the following syntax in Java?

MyObj.Name

You can’t. So to add a layer of abstraction, you now have to first refactor code. Again, as mentioned in #1, moving from MyObj.Name to MyObj.getName() and MyObj.setName() is a breaking change, especially in a API. It can have a massive impact.

Now, before you argue that you would never need to add a layer of abstraction for a simple object, let me remind you that all objects are not simple. I agree, on a simple model object, abstraction wouldn’t be necessary. However, the problem is certainly with a method on an object that also has public members. But you need the whole object, not just the method. And interface with only methods won’t be enough.

MyObj.Name
MyObj.CallServer();

Well, we can’t use the CallServer() method as is in a Unit Test. We need to use and interface and dependency injection and good language architecture. We have to refactor some. But we with properties we don’t need to make a breaking change. Without properties, we do. We have to change from MyObj.Name to MyObj.getName().

3. Properties are different than member variables and methods and reflection reflects that.

C# has reflection. You can loop through all members, properties, and methods separately. In Java, you have something similar. But no way to get properties separate from other methods.

When you only want to loop through getters and setters in Java, how do you do that? Unless every getter and setter is perfectly named getProperty setProperty, you can’t.

Can you loop through only properties today in Java? Maybe. Java cannot guarantee this ability.

4. Sharing objects between Java and C#.

This feature goes beyond properties, but the lack of a Property syntax is the biggest barrier.

In order to do this today, the object has to be written in Java and C#. C# developers have to live with the more verbose getProperty() setPropert() syntax. For example: MyObj.Id++ is nice and clean but the equivalent in java is MyObj.setId(MyOjb.getId() + 1);

Some tools, such as Hibernate/NHibernate, would benefit greatly from this feature.

5. Properties let you write with cleaner and shorter syntax.

You save programming time. You save lines of code. Look below, as three lines become one.

Java is not just a little more typing, it is a lot more typing. While you can argue that snippets or IDE code generator tools take care of this, I’d argue that C# has snippets and code generators, too. I can type prop tab in Visual Studio and have property pretty quickly so at best, snippets help Java almost catch up in development speed.

Also, let’s not forget that this is one single feature. I could write a whole article about all the ways that C#’s property syntax is cleaner and shorter than Java’s syntax.

How about adding one to an int?

MyObj.Id++;

vs in Java

MyObj.setId(MyObj.getId() + 1);

Again, a shorter and simpler syntax probably is a few dozen features as it will be used in so many different ways for so many different language benefits, not just one.

6. Most the property data is in one place.

This provides multiple features:

Easier to rename

Easier to copy and paste

Easier to identify as a property

public string Name { get; set; }
And in C#, a new syntax was added to make it so you no longer need to break this out to a backing field to set a default value.
public string Name { get; set; } = "Rhyous";

In java, there is no guarantee that properties are all together. I have seen code like this where the properties are not together in java.

While this is fine, it makes renaming have to occur in 7 places in three lines that are separated and could be anywhere in the class file. (Count all the times Name or Id is used and it is 7 times.) In C#, it is once with an auto property and only four times with a property with a backing field. Of course, C# has the same problem once you use a backing field. The backing field isn’t always together with the property, that is only two items that can be separate, not three. In Java, keeping it together would have to be by convention. I use this convention in C# to keep backing fields together.

7. In Aspect-oriented programming (AOP), you can inject code into only Properties.

Using tools like AspectJ, can you do a pointcut only on properties in java? No, you cannot. You can do it on methods and filter it on methods that start with “get” or start with “set”, but we all know that get and set are only conventions and so any method that doesn’t follow convention won’t get the injected code (point cut in AspectJ).

8. Names of properties in a class match when doing Xml or Json serialization

Xml and Json serialization are very common. In C#, for newly developed code, there is no need to decorate the code with any C# Attributes as the names will serialize to JSON and Xml as is.

In Java, the class is not so simple. There is not an easy or a guaranteed to work way to do this without a lot more code and without annotations. Here is the same object in Java and what you would have to do to have both getters and setters, private members and serialize using Simple. See my article on Java’s Simple Xml Serialization library.

So in Java, names don’t match, requiring the developer to add a fourth line, an annotation, just to make this work. And this is new code, not legacy code.

So when Java developers tell me that they don’t need properties, they are saying that they prefer four lines of code per property over one line per property when doing serialization. There is no argument. Of the two serializable class syntaxes above, C# is the winner by a long way.

Now some serializers other than Simple are made by using magic strings, where they hope that the get and set convention is used and if it is used, everything after the get or set is serialized. So getPerson() will serialize to Person. Still, this leaves the names not matching, and it requires magic strings of “get” and “set” and a hope (or requirement) that convention was followed.

C# also allows for taking of property of one name and serializing it to another name.

Yes, both C# and Java have this feature. The difference is, this is only needed to accommodate existing or legacy systems and not needed for brand new code and systems.

9. Names of properties in a class match when using a database ORM (or CSV or Excel headers)

Ok, this is almost an identical reason as #8, but serialization for JSON and Xml is vastly different than using a database ORM. But the same issue applies. And really Json and Xml are separate reasons and used often, so I could have broken those out into two features instead of one. But let’s not forget that this also benefits Excel output and CSV output as well as database table output. So, yes, this is a big, huge separate feature than serialization.

10. Making convention a language construct and not just a convention

Multiple times, we have mentioned that trying to require the get and set convention and having tools key of magic strings (starts with “get” or starts with “set”) is not really a good practice. The convention cannot be enforced. I will say that Java has done a tremendous job of trying to enforce this convention. But in the end, it is still a questionable practice that keys off of magic strings that are guaranteed to be there.

However, by implementing simpler properties, the convention goes away. Everyone who wants property features gets them. Tools no longer have to key off of magic strings.

One might argue that in C#, you can still write the Hava way, by writing out getProperty() setProperty(Property value) methods, and that using Properties instead of methods is also only a convention. But that is not true and is shortsighted. Properties are properties. Whereas java only has two object members: member variables and methods; C# has three: member variables, properties, and methods. Properties are not just methods. As noted earlier, properties are separate in reflection, in a different list in the object type information. There is a clear and distinct difference between properties and methods and member variables and how they behave in C#. Because of this, magic strings are not needed to execute code.

Don’t just copy, improve too

Salesforce added C# like properties to Apex, their originally java-based language. Only they enhanced the properties by not requiring a separate backing field. In C#, if you call a property from the get, you create an infinite loop. In Apex, any calls to the variable inside the get don’t create an infinite loop. They copy and improved. Java should do the same.

Apex properties are based on their counterparts in C#, with the following differences:

Properties provide storage for values directly. You do not need to create supporting members for storing values.

It is possible to create automatic properties in Apex. For more information, see Using Automatic Properties.

This is outdated information as C# has had the second item, auto properties, for many years now. However, C# doesn’t have the first improvement yet. Good job Salesforce and Apex. They didn’t just see a good thing and copy it, they saw it, copied it, and improved on it.

Properties Provide More Features

The benefits are many and far more valuable than Java developers or even most C# developer realize. The Pyramid analogy is really accurate. There are so many little features of C# properties that the sum of the feature set is, like sum of bricks in a pyramid, huge.

I surely missed many such features that properties provide.

What features do properties give you that would benefit the Java language? What shorter syntaxes do properties give you over Java’s getter setter syntax?

Today Microsoft® has announced that it has acquired FreeBSD®. FreeBSD is an open source operating system known for its very enterprise friendly license. Microsoft has recently embraced open source, moving .NET Core to GitHub, as well as announcing that a bash port that will run in Windows 10. However, this move was quite unexpected.

Microsoft is paying the FreeBSD Foundation approximately 300 Million for the FreeBSD brand, the open source operating system’s source repository, all forks, sub-brands (OpenBSD and NetBSD), websites, and communities.

Microsoft is in the process of negotiation full-time salaries for many of the developer volunteers.

Rumor has it that iXSystems may also be acquired either as part of this deal or as a separate deal. Interestingly enough, Microsoft is not paying for the source itself because that is already free for everyone.

In an interview with the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he made the following comment:

“With Apple using so much of FreeBSD’s source in their OS X operating system, we felt owning part of the OS X operating system’s source code could really help our Office development team to write a better Office port of OS X.”

We further questioned Nadella on how this affected their recent relationship with Canonical, who ported bash to Windows 10 for Microsoft.

“Canonical is behind Ubuntu, who is moving away from the Linux Kernel. Canonical has recently embraced the idea of UbuntuBSD. With this aquisition, Cononcial and Microsoft are going work close together over the next few years.

There used to rumors that older Windows Operating Systems used some FreeBSD code, we commented to Nadella. He responded with this quip:

“Only older ones? Where do you think we get all our great ideas for our networking stack. I would expect a lot of integration between Windows and FreeBSD, especially on the networking stack.”

Is there anything that FreeBSD has that you want to pull in as soon as you can.

“Well, we are jealous that they have ZFS and Windows does not. Unfortunately, this aquisition doesn’t help bring ZFS to windows. Oracle has the copyright on ZFS. I guess we’ll have to acquire Oracle next.”

That last statement, Nadella laughed.

We were also able to contact the President of the FreeBSD foundation, Justin T. Gibbs and discuss with him the acquisition.

Has Microsoft made any exciting promises to the FreeBSD Foundation in light of this acquisition? Gibbs quipped:

“You mean besides promising to not lay us all off? No, in seriousness, Microsoft has committed to the FreeBSD copyright. They are looking for improvements in IPv6 that we have already implemented. We are looking to make .NET a first class citizen and make C# the primary development language for Web Services, Cloud Services, and Desktop apps written for FreeBSD.”

Does Mono or Xamarin have a big play in that? Gibbs responded:

“Yes, it does. In fact, expect to see FreeBSD added to the list of projects creates when you start a new Xamarin Forms project in Visual Studio. Soon, when you write an App, it will run universally on Windows devices, as well as Android, iOS, OS X, and FreeBSD.”

What does the future look like for FreeBSD under Microsoft’s reign?Microsoft announces it is acquiring FreeBSD

We’ve been talking about the fact that Microsoft could make a huge move in enhancing the Windows App ecosystem simply by doing two things:

Buy Xamarin

Make it free

Recently, Microsoft bought Xamarin, checking off one of the two things they needed to do. I speculated on whether Microsoft would make Xamarin free for everyone. I believed that Microsoft would include Xamarin in different tiers for different levels of Visual Studio. But I noted that only by making it free for everyone, including the Visual Studio Community Edition Users, would Microsoft get the full community benefit.

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